[narrator]

"Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past… The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it." - From George Orwell's 1984.

What's weird is that this was meant to shock, but here we are in 2020 and this seems to be a good idea to a lot of people for some reason. 1984 was influenced a lot by Orwell's observance of Stalinism, where they would edit out people from old photos who had been executed and so forth. Stalin took a close interest in editing screenplays, editorials and even fiction produced in the Soviet Union to make it fit the narratives of Marxism. Why did he spend so much time on all of this? You have to make the whole ideology hang together if you want to transform society. The ruler must remove all contradictions everywhere so that all voices sing in unison one unifying vision and that includes popular art and media. There must be no contradictions!

[throwaway894345]

It has been often observed that 1984 was a cautionary tale, but some have mistaken it for a playbook.

[uyhtgrfed]

Orwell is accurately describing how history is recorded. Yes, all history, well-research history included. History is necessarily fuzzy and non-absolute. Historians work in conditions (social/political contexts) that shape not only what records are deemed appropriate to use, but also the means through which history ought to be recorded, presented and publicly disseminated. For example, Herodotus was a historian who relied in hearsay and myth to inform his largely oral depictions of world cultures. This was the accepted standard of his time. Fifty years ago, history was largely told as a series of 'big men' whose impact was absolute and only resisted by other big men. Today, history is largely social history, and uses lots of sources that account for everyday interactions, and the product is typically a monograph and a few blog posts or op-eds.

To get back on track, Orwell (in this passage and throughout the entire book, really) is basically dramatizing fundamental means of understanding the past, and the effect this has on how the future is imagined. Yes, it is about dogma, but no, the enforcement of dogma does not necessarily have to be as institutional or intentional as you seem to be suggesting. A fundamental aspect of social existence is that understanding the past draws heavily on our assumptions in the present, which in turn are drawn from how we view the past. Our understanding of the past shapes how we reify the world around us, which in turn influences how we imagine future possibilities.

See [double hermenutic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_hermeneutic), [reflexivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory)) and [postmodernism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism) (please actually read about what postmodernism is, rather than relying on popular understanding of the term, which is very often inaccurate)

[Fnoord]

> Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past… [...]

As quoted in the original Command & Conquer!

[BlueTemplar]

They had an actual time machine though, didn't they ?

[Cantbekhan]

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte.

[free_rms]

Owell was a Democratic Socialist, FYI. There used to be a lot more nuance to these things before the cold war.